ACW Naval game

A late gaming report, written up by Eddy ....

Yesterday (October 21), Jean-Pierre hosted a game of Sail and Steam Navies: Naval Battle System 1840 to 1880 for us. As this was our first play of those rules JP had decided on a nice introductory scenario : 4 USS ships versus 4 CSS ships on the mighty Mississippi river with some sandbanks thrown in for good measure.

David, the great-grandson of a CSA soldier, preferred playing the USS and it only made sense that JP joined him so both the experienced naval wargamers were on one side.

From looking at the ship cards it becomes immediately clear that in that day and age, no 2 ships are the same and in fact are radically different. So while the experienced USS commanders opted to steam up the Mississippi in a tight squadron I decided on a novel approach that always worked well historically : splitting my force. The CSS Gov Moore was little more than a fast platform for executing a ramming attack and I fully intended to exploit that by trying to outflank the USS squadron.

The mighty CSS fleet executing my plan:

Of course it was all too obvious and the USS squadron changed course to overwhelm my lonely rammer, but made the tactical mistake of leading that effort with their only decent gunnery platform, leaving my other 3 ships free to blast the lesser USS ships.

One thing about the period which got very well reflected in the rules : it's hard to do enough damage to actually sink a ship - so the encounter pretty much ended in a draw. But we managed to get a good number of turns in as the rules are simple once you play a turn or two. We got a ramming action in, had a critical hit, a crucial initiative die roll that could have changed the story and all the stuff you need to have a nice wargaming afternoon.

What I really liked about the rules is that they're both fast-playing and are exactly at the detail level I want them to be. Also, the research gone into this game is staggering - the heart and soul of which are the ship cards. Hundreds of them, often more than 1 for a ship that got upgraded during the war.

A final note on the models used : there's just one word for them : staggeringly detailed and accurate. As this was the first outing of the models as well I fully expected them to either sink or blow up immediately, but that was not the case. Looking forward to JP introducing a raid, fortresses, boarding actions and all the other good naval stuff.